Consider this season a swing and a miss for the St. Louis Rams (5-8).
The team thought they were getting a steady hand at quarterback when they swapped Sam Bradford out for Nick Foles during the offseason. Instead, Foles has floundered, completing a career low 56.4 percent of his passes while throwing seven scores against 10 picks in 11 games. His passer rating of 69.0 puts him at No. 32 in the league, behind the likes of Colin Kaepernick, Matt Hasselbeck, Brian Hoyer and Kirk Cousins. Overall, St. Louis has lost five of their last six games after starting 4-3.
Well on his way to his fourth consecutive losing season, head coach Jeff Fisher will likely be let go after the season. Fortunately, all hope is not lost for Rams fans. St. Louis still has an impressive front-seven and an emerging star at running back in Todd Gurley. They just need to find the right guy under center.
Could that guy be Memphis quarterback Paxton Lynch? CBS Sports seems to think so as they project the Rams to select him with the No. 10 pick in the 2016 NFL Draft.
"The Nick Foles experiment hasn't worked and the Rams need new life at quarterback. Lynch is still a work-in-progress at the position, but he checks a lot of boxes and would give the franchise hope, whether that's in St. Louis or Los Angeles."
Projecting draft slots this far out is rarely an accurate exercise, but there is value in exploring where certain players are expected to go and what a team's needs are. Lynch, along with Cal's Jared Goff, is expected to be one of the first QBs taken off the board.
The young passer is an impressive specimen at the position, standing 6-foot-7 and weighing 245 pounds. He's got a big arm and he takes care of the football (just three picks this season), but he hasn't faced a tough slate of competition and remains somewhat untested. Still, he is expected to be highly sought after should he declare for the NFL draft.
If that happens, the Rams can expect competition for Lynch from the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers, both of whom have quarterback issues of their own. Yet it can easily be argued that St. Louis offers more overall roster talent than either of those teams.
